On August 31, 1870, educator Maria Montessori was born.
German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin led aviation progress with his patent for a navigable balloon, on this date in 1895.
August 31 serves as Independence Day for Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
On August 30, 1918, Fanny Yefimovna Kaplan shot and seriously injured Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Though perhaps justifiable on some primary level — evil killers with power probably deserve to be killed in turn — this assassination attempt prompted the mass arrests and executions known as the Red Terror.
August 30, 1999, saw East Timor’s referendum vote for independence from Indonesia succeed.
On August 29,1786, Shays’ Rebellion — an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers — began. It was the first tax rebellion after the successful one in 1775–1783, and it so spooked the political leaders of the federal government that they ordered some amendments to the Articles of Confederation — eventually reconfiguring the federation with the U.S. Constitution.
Though the rebellion is named after former revolutionary soldier Daniel Shays (August 1747 – September 29, 1825), his actual role is disputed.
On August 28, 1789, William Herschel discovered a new moon of Saturn: Enceladus. Over four decades later, the New York penny daily The Sun perpetrated the infamous Great Moon Hoax using Herschel’s son’s name to legitimize its science-fictional “reportage.” The fourth of six installments hit the streets on August 28, 1835, in which “Sir John” tells us of the small, furry human beings with bat-like wings who (from their gesticulations) seemed to be rational. Eventually Richard Adams Locke confessed to having written the work — as “satire.” Edgar Alan Poe accused Locke of plagiarism while The Sun benefitted, on the whole, with increased circulation.
On August 27, 1828, the South American states of Brazil and Argentina recognized the sovereignty of Uruguay in the Treaty of Montevideo.
On August 26, 1863, the Swedish-language liberal newspaper Helsingfors Dagblad proposed the current blue-and-white cross flag as the flag of Finland.
In 1920 on the 26th of August, the 19th amendment to the United States Constitution — giving women the same access to voting as men — was certified.
In 2014 on this day in August, The Jay Report into the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal was published.
On August 25, 1609, Galileo Galilei first demonstrated his new invention, the telescope, to Venetian lawmakers. Magnifying distant images by about eight or nine times, it quickly became a profitable sideline for Galileo, who sold his telescopes to merchants who found them useful both at sea and as items of trade. He published his initial telescopic astronomical observations in March of the next year.
On August 24, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. On the same day, and not coincidentally, Ukraine declared itself independent from the Soviet Union.
On Tuesday, August 23, 1927, 36-year-old Nicola Sacco and 39-year-old Bartolomeo Vanzetti died on the same date and at the same location, executed after a lengthy, controversial trial for a murder and robbery, committed on April 15, 1920. The two were anarchists and Italian immigrants to America. The means of execution was the electric chair for both; the times of execution were between noon and 12:30 on that Tuesday.
On August 22, 1902, the Cadillac Motor Company was founded — and on the same day Theodore Roosevelt became the first President of the United States to make a public appearance in an automobile, riding through the streets of Hartford, Connecticut, in a Columbia Victoria electric car. Though TR’s public statement was supportive of the new technology, privately he referred automobiles “a trial” and “as distinct additions to the discomfort of living.”
His predecessor in office, William McKinley, had himself ridden in an automobile, but did not do so in public.
Also in 1902, the federal government bought a Stanley Steamer for presidential outings, the first automobile in general service by what the Founding Fathers referred to as the “general government.”